What does intercultural awareness do?

From a study that we have done on the impact of intercultural awareness the following are some of the key findings-
We realized that building awareness is a very powerful way to bridge the cultural differences. Many forms of awareness building was done, the most effective one seems to be the exchange program. It has helped to understand cultural differences at the individual and team level. It has helped in generating knowledge on different cultures and how they operate. It has lead to looking for cultural clues and providing explanation for misunderstandings, reduced judgemental behaviours from either party.
We have seen that cultural awareness has lead to open mind among the teams. By nature there are far more interactions and the quality of interactions are improved. There is a shift in the interactions from formal and business like to the informal-collaborative with a focus on the end gaols to be met.

Seeing the world through different lens

• Cultural diversity is not something that goes away tomorrow: it makes doing business more complex but enriches global business as long as the best of both worlds are recognised
• Basic concepts (like agreements) have different meaning to cultures involved in the team
• Learn to foresee and calculate how others will act / react
• To minimise unpleasant surprises and enable the team to interact successfully. E.g. business dilemma: Americans are interested mainly in profit and the Japanese in market share: how to proceed?

Key cross-cultural competence to be considered

• Space orientation
• Time: past, present, future orientation
• Communication patterns for meetings
• Listening habits for aspects of sales, marketing & advertising
• Body language as 80% of our message

Mutual respect is key to manging culture bias

Understanding the culture of your client and-or partner in business and-or work is important. Many scientists have researched on the topic of culture bringing out valuable insights, especially in the context of national culture. The point I am trying to bring out here is that the mutual respect is of great importance and overcomes many issues related to culture bias.

I have been working with people from other nationalities and cultures. It would take me about two months to get a good handle on the way of working of these people. Keeping an open mind and keen observation has helped me to know the way of working and preferences of people from other cultures. In particular i would look for patterns of behaviors with reference to work situations. Once the patterns are identified I would adapt to match the frequency of my partner's way of working. This method has helped me to a large extent in managing work place culture bias.

I also realized that adapting to a certain way of working is not good enough, if one is seeking a sustained and successful collaboration. What is needed beyond adapting is to gain mutual respect. I have experienced that when there is a lack of respect then things don’t work well even if we adapt to the culture in consideration. The situation is like that of a forced marriage, very transactional and the spirit is missing. A good testimony of this is that i have at times done things which were against the customs of my collaboration partner, however, I was forgiven because of the mutual respect that both of us had towards each other and to our work.